Australian Rugby Referee Matt Cecchin Comes Out

A grand final referee for Australia’s National Rugby League has announced that he’s gay.

Australia’s Herald Sun reports that Matt Cecchin has decided to come out now that his teenage son has finished high school. Cecchin tells the paper that he kept his sexual orientation to himself the past six years because he didn’t want to tip his teenage son’s “world upside down.”

“I would do whatever I could to protect my son,” Checchin says. “He’s been so good to me about it. It hasn’t made the world of difference to him.”

Cecchin says he came out to close friends and family after reading out rugby player Ian Roberts’s book. “Like a lot of people, I thought to be gay you had to be feminine, you had to go to nightclubs and you had to be in the scene, and I was never into that,” says Cecchin.

“It wasn’t until I read Ian’s book that I started to tick a few boxes.”

Cecchin says he’s never experienced any discrimination or ill treatment as a result of his actual or perceived orientation and he doesn’t expect to, adding that “I’d be very surprised if I was the only gay person in rugby league.”

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